"That's the future..."

"..What a fascinating and modern age we live in."

Yes I'm quoting Russell Crowe, but it's exactly how I feel right now. I read somewhere else that we have now entered a new industrial revolution being referred to as the "Exponential Age" . Our knowledge and technological achievements up until now have been incremental. Now, knowledge is increasing exponentially and our achievements equally so each year. I remember reading about this in the late 80s, and about HOTOL before that. It was considered science fiction. 30 years later now technology is catching up with the dream.

It's a testament to the vision of the people that came up with these concepts decades ago. I only hope that they are still alive to see the end result of what they could see as a possibility, yet were restricted by our technical ability of the time.

Re: Not really secret

Funny thing is, a 30 second google for Hibernia Station Southport brought up this place on google maps, goo.gl/iMfhx7

They are quite open about the site according to this document, which discusses the cable routes up the street, the AC power, the backups onsite, the cooling. http://www.merseymaritime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CLS-Datasheet.pdf

Re: No surprise!

They had a data breach 2 years later. They brushed it under the carpet, and today their share price is 4x what it was at the time. The breach happenned before GDPR, otherwise I would have reported it myself, along with a copy of the letter of resignation I handed over at the time.

Re: I'll upgrade when I need to, thanks

That’s exactly why for the past few upgrades I’ve simply bought the card at the top of the Passmarks value-for-money list:- https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

This list should be on everyone’s go to, when they want a new graphics card. If I buy a card on here at the same time one of my mates buys the best card money can buy, we both need to upgrade still at the same time. 2x the cost never = 2x the performance.

"it probably can no longer run a web browser!"

Um, I'm sitting here typing this on an Intel i7 4770K machine with 16GB RAM I picked up in 2013 from Ebuyer.com for as I recall £700ish. Cpubenchmark.net tells me it has a CPU score of 10087. I've just looked at Ebuyer's website, and seen I can get a Core i7 8700 machine with 16GB RAM for £650ish. Cpubenchmark tells me that this newer machine has a score of 15132. My machine is only 2/3 the speed of the brand new machine at 5 years old. I also play games on this machine. There is no game on the market that does not play well on this machine. And I'm also running a 4K monitor at full res on it since I put a GeForce 1050ti into it. To say 5 year old machines are obsolete is absolute rubbish. Please go to Cpubenchmark.net and look up the speed of your processor and get a basis for comparison.

Re: Interesting angle.

Solicitors can represent in cases where you would typically see barristers, but when they do, if they are referred to as “Learned” as in “My learned colleague” when the lawyers are referring to each other, the solicitor has to correct them stating he is “not Learned”.

It can become a bit childish in the courtroom if the barrister wants to make the solicitor repeatedly say he is “not Learned” by referring to him as “Learned”.

I'm suspecting* that Plusnet's new billing system is designed to displace the VAT payments owed to HMRC to a future date by making the VAT appear as Cash Accounting to the customer, but Accrual Accounting to HMRC. That way VAT is only due when Plusnet decides to raise an Invoice rather than when the customer receives a bill.

With Cash Accounting, HMRC is owed VAT when you receive payment from a customer.

With Accrual Accounting, HMRC is owed VAT when an invoice is presented to the customer. When customers have credit accounts, you have to pay HMRC the VAT up front on the sale, then wait for the customer to pay according to the terms of your credit agreement, i.e. 30 days, 60 days etc. If the Customer doesn't pay, then you have to make a claim for the VAT back from HMRC.

I suspect that the bills being presented to customers are not recorded internally or accounted for as invoices, but requests for payment. So no VAT is due until Plusnet decide when is a good time to raise an invoice.

I have no idea if my suspicions are correct, but I received an email from Plusnet to tell me that the new bills I could download on the portal were no longer VAT invoices (they were previously). The new bills have "This is not a VAT invoice" plastered all over them. This is the only explanation I can come up with as to why it matters. VAT payments can be deferred.

* All of this is pure speculation and no one should infer that Plusnet are doing anything illegal.

OneDrive doesn't work even when it's working. When it can replicate a windows directory character for character exactly just like DropBox can, then I'll say otherwise. As it stands now there are too many windows file-system compliant characters in file names that OneDrive can't accept, and simply refuses to back up. Come on MS, it's an MS product, at least make it character compliant with your other MS products.

Re: 5 of those with one BFR

“The could have rolled out 5 saturn 5 rockets, and used those to launch the entire thing....”

Better still they could just roll out 5 of the Saturn 5s, send them up, dock them altogether and make a huge giant Skylab!

*for you young ones, the Saturn 5 was so powerful it was able to reach orbit without needing fully fuelling. So they converted part of the rocket unused fuel tank into a space station, that effectively launched itself into orbit becoming Skylab. Suggest you google the videos of it. It was so big they could fly around the inside with jet packs!

Re: From Window Tax to Windows Tax

"No need for an OS rant - this could be web-based"

It already is web based, you log in online and fill in 7 boxes. This is no longer good enough for HMRC, who want per-transaction-line auditing available through the API. I.e. you say you made £20,000 of sales, HMRC want the ability to scan all the transactions to verify you actually did make £20,000 of sales. Hold on a minute, your stock purchases don't tally up with your sales for the last 6 months, and the amount of income you are making doesn't match your personal tax returns, something must be fishy here, inspection time!.

Re: What about Windows 10 that Office is sitting on?

All we need is everyone from European countries here to report MS to their equivalent of the UK's ICO over this, then sit back and watch as 28 simultaneous charges of breaching the GDPR occur at once. It would be most excellent if each country could fine MS 4% of annual turnover in turn.

Re: IIRC

Yes, with VAT carousel, it could be either one 2 companies who bought and sold the goods onwards before you who committed the fraud, or one of the 2 companies who bought and sold the goods on after you sold them that could have committed the fraud.

Analogy, I could sell a crow bar today to a wholesaler, who a week later sells it to a building firm, who a week later gives it to one of their employees who uses it to break into a house. By HMRCs reasoning I didn't perform due-diligence that the end user wasn't going to be a criminal, and as proof they point to the use of the crow bar by a criminal ergo due-diligence couldn't have been performed. HMRC tend to use the same carousel reasoning when they decide who is guilty of carousel fraud.

All is not lost. The purpose of the tax tribunal is to always find in favour of HMRC so no real shock there. Real court however, where this will now appeal to, has a much higher bar when it comes to the burden of proof of intent. It's real court where the majority of carousel fraud cases fall down simply because the prosecution have rarely been able to prove that you can know what is going to happen to goods, once they are out of your possession, two or more transactions down the line, and sometimes the criminals just need a third party to buy and sell the goods on legitimately to complete the loop.

Re: chemical plant?

Re: Sage 50!

It's correct. Sage 50 was for the small business, 200 was for the enterprise. However, I'm now thinking I meant Sage 100. It's been about a decade now and all I can remember is it was black and green and beeped like crazy.

Re: Sage 50!

Sage 200 was worse. It's dialogues produced a beep using the PC speaker. The only problem was that for the duration of the beep, there was no computer activity possible including keyboard buffering. We used to have touch typists that would be screwed up by the beep. If the beep didn't occur, they could enter an order without looking at the screen, they had all the sequences and key presses memorised, but at each beep they had to look at the screen to see how far through they had got, and how far back they had to rewind to carry on. The answer to the dialogue was always the same. We solved the problem by replacing it with Navision.

Remeber the Atos disability assessments were intended not to ensure that those with genuine disability retained obtained the correct benefits, but rather to remove as many people as possible, for as long as possible from any payments to relieve the public purse.

In the same way this system is working as intended by those at the top. 7000 annual salaries coming out of the coffers instead of 100000 salaries is the desired result. A one off payment to Capita of £50m for a job well done in saving £1.7bn is to be commended. Public servants the lot of them.

Re: Mission Creep

Re: Incommunicado!

I’m thinking maybe they should just pay someone anonymous to start a fire at the rear entrance while the CCTV is conspicuously down, that forces all the building occupants to be evacuated.

If assange still refuses to leave, then I’m sure that “firemen” are more than willing to administer a knockout gas mask, I mean an oxygen gas mask when they find his lifeless body inside, while they perform their fire fighting duties.

"how are the ICO going to enforce the GDPR against a Canadian company?"

This is going to be a very unpopular answer, but, first of all I'll do what no other commentard on this topic has ever done, and post chapter and verse of the actual law rather than say, spout bollocks about how EU law applies abroad, or that to do business in the EU you must adhere to the GDPR:-

Enforcement Outside EU: Chapter 5 of the GDPR relates to handling of data by non-member countries or organizations. The relevant text relating to enforcement of fines is from Article 50, titled "International cooperation for the protection of personal data":

(1) In relation to third countries and international organisations, the Commission and supervisory authorities shall take appropriate steps to:

a) develop international cooperation mechanisms to facilitate the effective enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data;

b) provide international mutual assistance in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data, including through notification, complaint referral, investigative assistance and information exchange, subject to appropriate safeguards for the protection of personal data and other fundamental rights and freedoms;

c) engage relevant stakeholders in discussion and activities aimed at furthering international cooperation in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data;

d) promote the exchange and documentation of personal data protection legislation and practice, including on jurisdictional conflicts with third countries.

So, to answer your question, they haven't a hope in hell.

Section 1a) says they will need to negotiate new agreements with other countries, so we can prosecute their citizens.

b) We'll offer to help other countries let us prosecute their citizens.

c) Ask nicely if we can prosecute their citizens,

and d) if all else fails, keep telling everyone involved what a great idea it would be if other countries would let us prosecute their citizens.

I presume it’s more likely that Ireland was participating in a long con!

Given the effective rate of tax for Apple prior to the investigation was 0.005%, I think that for Ireland to receive an equivalent 14 billion euros in tax revenue, they would have had to wait decades if not never.

Has any official source compared the current windfall to projected income had the state of affairs not changed. Including the cost of brown envelopes of course!

Repealing stuff

The same goes for Brexit. There seems to be a myth that because the UK voted to brexit, we have to go ahead with it end of discussion. Even if the referendum was legally binding (which it wasn't, but that's another story) it can be overturned simply by holding another referendum. A democracy can overturn any previous decision, simply by following the democratic process. Some of the people I hear on the news that state "the people have spoken, the government must carry their wishes out" are forgetting that in a democracy, the people can change their minds, otherwise we would have political parties that once in power, couldn't be voted out.

If another referendum was held now (lets just say it's a legally binding one to keep it simple) and the result of that referendum was to remain, then the previous decision to leave has no legal standing.

I think our government may just decide to hold another referendum if things are looking messy so business can carry on as normal. Better the devil you know than the one you don't.

“Given that we've already enacted GDPR into British law in the form of the Data Protection Act 2018, they're in for a shock.”

You’re forgetting that once we’re brexited, then a single Act of Parliament can repeal any EU legislation previously enacted using wording as simple as “Act of Parliament xxxxxxxx is now repealed this date of xxx of yyy year zzzz.”

As a sovereign nation any legislation or agreement we’ve entered into with other nations can simply be repealed by our democratically elected parliament.

Re: Not the root problem

I do recall a long time ago the architects of a large military base making the same assumption, the sheer power and technological supremacy of the base would render any weakness inconsequential.

Shortly after construction of the base, but before it became fully operational, a copy of the plans leaked, and a small group of non-conformists examined the blueprints discovered an exploit. Before they new it some farmer kid who had spent his teenage years bulls-eyeing womp rats came along and dropped a missile into an exhaust pipe that was only 2 meters wide, destroying the base in its entirety.

If only the architects had followed best practice in securing the design of the base, things would have turned out quite differently!

Re: Phones too

We have a period of several years where all our sales dept kept breaking their phones, and getting new ones on the insurance we were paying a premium for. Eventually we said enough is enough and sent round an email saying we were cancelling the insurance, everyone was responsible for keeping their hardware in good working order, and that we would be deducting from their wages the cost to replace them. We also provided Otterbox cases throughout, so there was no likelyhood of accidental breakage by dropping.

No-one believed it and many phones were removed from the cases because they didn't look good.... until the first breakage occurred, and sure enough he got a brand new latest model phone, and the cost deducted from his wage. Suddenly all the phones were back in their cases and we never had another breakage. Saved a fortune in yearly insurance.

Re: I'm unexpectedly impressed

I pretty much came to the same conclusion, the pre and over hype hasn't done it any favours, but to someone born in the 70s when Robbie the Robot and Twiki was amazing, it's a lot of neat real tech in a pair of goggles.

Re: No-one will ever...

“ long transparent crystals. That would be cool.”

I had a thought the other day, suppose a civilisation advanced enough that it could store data in stone tablets rather than crystals. Stone tablets always seem to survive the civilisations that created them and are always being unearthed in archaeological digs thousands of years later. I feel a sci-if story coming on.